Sometimes, I think that one "Melee Combat" skill would suffice, with different Styles/Schools of Fencing as Specializations/Expertises etc.I guess TRoS already kinda did this with the Defaults, but i always thought it's weird that to learn a new system, one has to start completely anew - as many principles, once learned, apply to many if not all schools of fencing.

It seems to me that, instead of having all these Proficiencies from start, one might have a general Melee Skill that allows use of any weapon; and once a certain level of mastery is achieved, one would get the option to pick up Style Proficiencies. That's how i did it.

Ultimately though, i guess having many Proficiencies is a good design choice for a game that is ultimately about people who are involved in combat a lot.

"First Rule of War Club: Don't fight in the War Room" - Clint Eastwood, 1920

nemedeus wrote:It seems to me that, instead of having all these Proficiencies from start, one might have a general Melee Skill that allows use of any weapon; and once a certain level of mastery is achieved, one would get the option to pick up Style Proficiencies. That's how i did it.

One of my drafts from '11 had exactly that mechanic. You had one CP and then could buy like... three levels in each proficiency, which essentially gave access to more and more in-depth maneuvers. It got shot down though, and for a good reason. I think the main reason I introduced the mechanic was to simplify the CP penalties across multiple proficiencies, but the BaseTN mechanic made a complete non-issue out of that whole problem later on.

nemedeus wrote:Ultimately though, i guess having many Proficiencies is a good design choice for a game that is ultimately about people who are involved in combat a lot.

People tend to gravitate towards specific weapons of their preference and having equal CP with all, you can't emulate a lot of the fiction. One prime example to come to mind is Quigley Down Under where a weaselly guy forces a rifleman into a pistol duel to gain an easy upper hand due to his opponent's lack of pistol expertise. If everyone had equal ability with each weapon, then such a situation wouldn't even occur to the players/GM.

Plus it would allow French crossbowmen to pick up English longbows after the battle to improve their fire rate. And Roman slingers could pick those longbows up as well, putting them into immediate effect. I can also tell from personal experience that if I'm decent with sword & shield, it won't help me a lot in grapple, unless I have specifically trained for that. So, yeah, a lot of things would break, but ranged weapons would surely break the most.

"You can never have too many knives."- Logen Ninefingers, The Blade Itself

nemedeus wrote:It seems to me that, instead of having all these Proficiencies from start, one might have a general Melee Skill that allows use of any weapon; and once a certain level of mastery is achieved, one would get the option to pick up Style Proficiencies. That's how i did it.

One of my drafts from '11 had exactly that mechanic. You had one CP and then could buy like... three levels in each proficiency, which essentially gave access to more and more in-depth maneuvers. It got shot down though, and for a good reason. I think the main reason I introduced the mechanic was to simplify the CP penalties across multiple proficiencies, but the BaseTN mechanic made a complete non-issue out of that whole problem later on.

I actually remember that conversation. The exact example I brought up was the case of a champion boxer or MMA fighter. No matter how scary Muhammad Ali (or Conner McGregor, if you want a more contemporary reference) might be in a ring with their fists, they just aren't going to know anything useful about saber fencing outside of the basics of timing and distance. We currently represent that overlap through defaulting.

That said, we say in quite a few places that the game is there to customize. If your game isn't focused on combat in such a fashion that you care about the difference between weapon proficiencies, you can very easily condense it down to fewer broader ones. We'd already discussed in passing once that if we did a modern or sci-fi game, we'd probably take the opposite approach we have now - melee proficiencies would be extremely broad but we'd make the ranged proficiencies more specific. For example, a modern game might just call all melee the Brawling proficiency and give it access to all maneuvers... but you might find it worthwhile to turn around and then separate Firearms into pistols, SMGs, rifles, etc.

Agamemnon wrote:For example, a modern game might just call all melee the Brawling proficiency and give it access to all maneuvers... but you might find it worthwhile to turn around and then separate Firearms into pistols, SMGs, rifles, etc.

Sounds exactly like my pre-alpha post-apocalyptic demo game

"You can never have too many knives."- Logen Ninefingers, The Blade Itself

Without really getting into detail, we once talked about more complex ranged combat maneuvers in the way we have more complex melee maneuvers.

In a pre-modern game where the closest thing to a semi-automatic weapon is a bow, we don't really need to put as much detail and emphasis into the ranged side of things beyond our current system that takes cover, concealment, and the skirmish-based movement into account. But the natural shift in focus for a modern or sci-fi game would be to have less detail in melee and way more detail in ranged combat to handle more tactical firefights.

When we first talked about this, melee proficiencies didn't have emphases yet.. So I could also see modern ranged proficiencies having some form of emphases that helps distinguish the way that particular set of weapons is used.